#on testosterone no less

[sleepy-shutin]

i don't care to get into most LGBT discourse but i keep seeing this and frankly, i'm so sick of you people as a ~genderweird dykefag~ lmao.

if you've never read stone butch blues, butch is a noun, the persistent desire, looked at lesbian herstory archives, spoken to transgender and genderfucked lesbians, or read any kind of important historical work about lesbianism, then you don't get an opinion on lesboys, multigender lesbians, transmasc or trans man lesbians, butch lesbians, lesbians on T, NONE of it, because you don't know what the hell you're talking about, and i'm so sick of you people acting like you do because you saw a tiktok or a twitter thread or you read a carrd.

lesboys have existed for longer than most of you have been alive. multigender, transmasc/trans man lesbians and other lesbians playing "5D chess with gender" have existed for longer than you've been alive.

everyone's fine with gay and bisexual men being genderweird and being "a man who's a woman who's a man" and every other kind of genderfucked, but the second a woman or a lesbian/dyke does it, they're viciously attacked by fucking everybody for "bringing men into lesbianism" - as if that's something that transgender women haven't been hearing for decades - and 90% of these people aren't women, lesbians, or even attracted to women.

no wonder you people are so inhospitable to trans women. you hold women and lesbians/dykes to such high standards of femaleness/femininity that when we aren't the kind of woman or dyke you think we should be, you throw a tantrum over it. maybe get out of the online LGBT discourse and into the real world of queer and genderfucked people and broaden your perspectives please.

[bisclavaret]

a day late to my 6 years on t anniversary ✨🏳️‍⚧️ a short comic about looking back

[lgbtqtext]

[pinbones]

There's two types of people who use transandrophobia to decribe transmascs' and trans mens' experiences:

- Simply specificity, language used to hone in on a specific way being trans affects people who just happen to be men

- As both the above and as a springboard to discuss how societal misogyny, radical feminism, gender stereotypes, and bioessentalism affect all people who can be pecieved as men or masculine by others, and how bigotries compound in meaningful ways with stereotypes and bigotry surrounding maleness and manhood

Like. Half of you are saying "maleness is a hollow experience which is standard, and exists in opposition to gendered oppression, and transandrophobia is therefore when dudes experience misogyny and transphobia"

and half of you are saying "Being percieved and/or transitioning towards male uniquely affects how I am treated, because, for example, how people perceive my blackness or mental illness or kinkiness or femininity is compounded with my manhood in ways that don't usually happen to gender conforming cisperi women"

Which are two fundamentally different approaches to transandrophobia as a concept. One suggests that maleness is a simple downy layer of privilege that coats a person through their male life, and the other acknowledges that a man (or somebody perceived as masculine/male) can experience oppression in ways that those NOT perceived male may not.

Only one of these interpretations is intersectional. Black individuals who are policed more hashly when interpreted as masc know they are risking dangerous experiences when transitioning to male, as has been discussed before on here (to no avail). Male or percieved male people with personality disorders are treated as more dangerous than women with similar symptoms, and are sometiems diagnosed with different disorders entirely based on percieved gender differences. This affects transmascs too, especially considering the already dire state of queerness in psychiatric institutions. Being a male birthing parent is a whole shitshow of transphobia because men are not supposed to give birth, and transmascs are lucky to access related healthcare at all, let alone access it without being ceaselessly misgendered and treated as a stigmatised 'other' to deleterious affects on parent and baby. These are just a few examples, there are many more ways maleness can screw a person over. And that's not to say that female privilege is a thing instead of male privilege, but rather to emphasise that men are not supposed to be minorities. Men are not supposed to be assaulted, men are not supposed to be outliers, men are absolutely not supposed to be trans.

When a man is autistic, he's not just autistic, he's an autistic male, and that makes him more likely to be killed by cops (especially if black). When someone says "you claim you're not ableist but you're scared of the homeless x on a bus talking to xself", they always say the person is a man, because that sounds more significant (and cops think so too). Consider when a person's rape/abuse is considered to not be all that serious due to the victim being male, or when a man's attraction is considered to be more exploitative than a woman's, or when a fat man is considered more creepy/sexist than a thin man or a fat woman. Consider why so many caricatures of evil and creepiness are men with deformities. Consider the fact that men's bathrooms don't have baby changing tables, and that a man may get less support from others after their child's death than the mother might. Maleness can negatively compound with things like minority status, vulnerability, aggression, sexuality, etc. in ways that screw that person over, both in social spaces (such as queer communities that dislike/distrust maleness and masculinity, or how isolation affects men harder), and in more tangible ways, like their rates of suicide and being murdered.

There are tangible ways in which transitioning to male can negatively affect a person's life even if you remove (hypothetically, not really possible) the transphobia element, and these also constitute as worthwhile topics of discussion. If you think maleness is the lack of gendered oppression, then you're not intersectional in your feminism at all. If your life as a male is genuinely sunshine and rainbows (apart from the transphobia if trans), then good for you, genuinely that's great, but not everyone lives in a radfem fantasy world.

Being unable to tell the difference between men talking about mens issues/liberation, and right wingers talking about oppressing women more, isn't feminist. It's ignorant and antifeminist. (MRAs don't care about actual mens lib, and are actively worsening it because they are sexist and opposed to gender lib. You guys know that, right? That male and female liberation aren't oppositional or binary, but the same gender liberation that is entirely oppositional to patriarchy?)

These men and mascs talking about issues facing men aren't ignorant womanhaters who deny misogyny and want ultraprivileged men to be coddled, they are good faith members of your community with experiences just as varied and valid as yours. Treat them like it.

[mrbrrop]

Ok, so I just calculated

If I do get my testosterone around my birthday and if it takes it around around 2-6 months to stop my period

I only have 7-11 more periods to go through for the rest of my life (hopefully)

If it takes a little more time 12-13, which is very little to go though since the average number of periods per life is around 451

IT'S ONLY 1.5-2.4% (each period ~0.2%) (I think? I'm shit at maths)

My life is about to get so much more awesome!!!

MWHAHA FOR REAL NOW!!

[slutforpringles]

visacashapprb: Time to regroup and learn from Quali as we get prepped for race day 🇳🇱

[thecultofcupid]

Taking testosterone as a trans man is so cool actually. Testosterone is not poison. It isn't evil. It is freeing and beautiful and I love taking testosterone

[theredumbrellatheory]

:3 yeah

[fatal-blow]

the interplay of testosterone and estrogen with chronic triggerpoints/general muscle health is so interesting man my mind is spinning

[an-ruraiocht]

reflections on hormones and medical misogyny and hoop-jumping

in order to start testosterone, i ended up having to pay i think £480 total for three (3) separate appointments with two (2) separate psychiatrists to admit that i'm definitely trans before i could get a referral to an endocrinologist which also cost me several hundred pounds so that they could prescribe testosterone. i was lucky that my GP did the blood tests or i would have had to pay for those too, likewise they took over the prescriptions so i only pay the £9.50ish charge for those rather than the full price, but it was still a hell of a lot of a cash to fork out. i had to pay all of this because the waiting list for a first appointment with the gender clinic is more than five years and bc they make nonbinary people jump through more hoops for referrals than they do for binary trans people following a more conventional transition path. they now test my blood every 3 months to make sure everything's at a healthy level and it's not having a knock-on impact on my organs and they check in regularly about dosage

when i was seventeen i had a single conversation with a GP after which they put me on the combined contraceptive pill, for which i never paid a penny, and which i stayed on more or less continuously (there was one break for a few months) until i was 28. for 11 years this altered my body's hormone levels to the point of suppressing my testosterone to the absolute lowest level that could be considered technically "healthy". it just about performed its required function of making my periods regular and semi-bearable, but along the way this fucked my joints, my muscle strength, my ability to grow body hair, my energy levels, and my ability to concentrate. for eleven years. on the basis of one appointment with a non-specialist as a teenager. they never tested anything except my blood pressure and even that got skipped as time went on and they could dismiss it as "nice and low" while ignoring my chronic anaemia and fatigue

why does fucking with my hormones in one direction require constant oversight and jumping through tons of hoops, and the other doesn't? why are they so alert to the side effects of gender-affirming care, and completely ignoring the side effects of other hormonal healthcare?

it's not that they shouldn't have prescribed me the pill or should have put additional barriers in place; it's that i shouldn't have had to jump through all those hoops to access testosterone. it's not that they shouldn't be monitoring the impact of the testosterone, it's that they should have monitored the impact of the pill. it's not that 17yo me shouldn't have been trusted to give informed consent, it's that 17yo me wasn't informed but was permitted to consent, while 28yo me was informed but not permitted to consent, and had to jump through dehumanising hoops instead to have strangers assess whether they deserved to make choices

they fucked me over with both sets of hormones. they whacked my body's hormone sliders firmly towards the oestrogen/progesterone ends of the spectrum without a second thought, because that was "natural", so fuck the side effects, but they made it as hard for me as possible to try to go the other way. i was anaemic and could scarcely grow body hair and had injuries that refused to heal for years and couldn't concentrate or stay awake for a DECADE but i'm supposed to be scared of the possibility of male pattern baldness? (i mean. i am. but going a bit bald feels a small price to pay for feeling awake when my eyes are open, to borrow a phrase from the raven cycle)

so much of it in both directions is medical misogyny: the idea that i have a particular body which is supposed to behave in a particular way and so the only "solutions" available are those which conform to this, and the lack of research into the actual effects of hormones like oestrogen and progesterone on other health conditions

but what really sickens me is how they say "you can't possibly make this decision, we have to keep people away from these side effects, we don't know what impact this has on bodies long-term" but they'll put a 17yo on the pill and then abandon them despite ten years of chronic illness with no further investigation into how artificial hormone levels might be affecting some of that chronic illness. you can't have it both ways, medicine. either hormones need monitoring and caring about or they don't

access to the pill is healthcare. it should be done on an informed consent model, and needs careful monitoring to make sure it's helping not harming, and adjustments if necessary.

access to gender affirming hormones is healthcare. it should be done on an informed consent model, and needs careful monitoring to make sure it's helping not harming, and adjustments if necessary.

instead you have to fight tooth-and-nail for one and pay through the nose for it, and the other distributed carelessly with little thought or follow-up. i am only now beginning to realise how profoundly i was being fucked over by the pill and just because it also helped me does not mean it was fine that that happened and that, crucially, nobody would have realised it was happening if i hadn't decided to go on T (prompting both investigations into my actual hormone levels, and then perceptible changes once they began to shift). because they did not give a fuck. because it was "natural" for a "female" body to behave like that, right?

anyway idk if i'm gonna stay on T forever but i don't think i could ever go back on the combined pill knowing what i know now about how it's possible for my body to feel when my T level isn't literally 0.5. i'm not thrilled about the idea of going for lucky dip hormone fluctuations given how well that's gone for me in the past but i guess i'll cross that bridge when i come to it. there's got to be some kind of viable option out there for me

[mokutone]

your art makes me wanna start testosterone

i can't read tone well, so this is either an incredibly touching ask, or an extremely funny one, and in the absence of confirmation: both!

i'm in a chatty mood, so i'll share some thoughts about testosterone and my art.

i liked being on testosterone a lot. i had an IM injection every two weeks (on tuesdays!) and because that's a sizeable dose every 14 days that slowly disperses, it can cause some mood fluctuations (every other friday i would have a crisis about not feeling like the world had a place for me in it) but even those were far more manageable than the ones that would come with my previous and current monthly hormone cycle (every month i spend a solid week thinking the world will never have a place for me in it)

It gave me a patchy little bit of scruff on my chin and a whispy mustache under my nose that still struggles on, despite adversity!

It redistributed my fat a little bit, but that's long since gone back to pre-T shape.

it lowered my voice! that hasn't changed :^)! even if i never go back on t, that won't change. it was the thing i most wanted, and its the one i'm most grateful for. Pre-T, I didn't speak much. I'm getting better and better at talking and getting more and more comfortable communicating with people because of it.

having been off t now for 3 years, i don't pass anymore—not as a cis man, or a cis woman, certainly not as anything approximating straight. if people look at me and see anything, i'd hazard a guess that they see me as A Queer (the noun—for all it's complicated connotations).

i'm not surprised that my art might make somebody want to start testosterone! a lot of my art was made out of the aching grief that came with being kicked off of testosterone, and how neatly that loss of autonomy over my own body knits in with yamato's loss of autonomy over his own.

how my body started doing things i disliked, how i didn't have the support necessary to access the healthcare i needed—how my inability to give myself what i needed made me feel as though i were trapped inside of myself and abandoned (by both myself and the world at large)

when i write comics about yamato as a trans man, i don't take away his testosterone, because that hits a little too close to home for me. for Ninja War Town Reasons, he has plenty of access to all the HRT he could ever need and nobody questions his need for it—instead, i project my own horrors onto the way Danzō defined his identity for him as a child, the way that Kabuto and Obito dehumanize him as an adult in their war efforts, and reduce him to the thing his body holds (the Mokuton). I give him a kneejerk compulsion to dehumanize himself (out of a feeling that he has a duty to his community to do so) and I give him a slow-growing resistance to that impulse (which comes out of a feeling that the people he loves would frown upon seeing him reduce himself like that)

it's dysphoria! it's not gender dysphoria, but it's a loss of self, and a need to reclaim it. it's a war between the hollow shell of a thing he thinks he has to be, and the vibrant and messy person beneath it that he is. it's a desperate need to say "this is who i am—only i can say it"

I enjoyed HRT a lot. it was a really useful tool in helping me feel like my body was my own, that i didn't have to fight it, that we were the same entity. It's not the only tool, but it was a really good one, and one day I hope to use it again.

(as for the being off of it—it's unpleasant, but i'm enduring! being somebody who now doesn't really pass as anything has put me in a weird and interesting position, where I'm constantly having to declare myself to people, because nobody knows what to make of me on any front. they don't know if i'm a man, a woman, nonbinary, nor even what age i am (Augh!!!!) it forces me to be brave and vulnerable more than I'm comfortable with—if I tell somebody I'm a man, there's no way that they will believe I'm cis, but I'm not about to recloset myself—and I don't think I could at this point anyway.)

(there's something fascinating about the position i find myself in, and while i'd leap back on t the moment that an opportunity presented itself to do so, i do feel like i'm experiencing something interesting and important in this weird zone i find myself in)

[uncanny-tranny]

On the topic of hormones, I love trans men, transmasculine people, abinary, multigender people, or whomever else who takes estrogen and trans women, transfeminine, abinary, multigender people, or whomever else who takes testosterone.

There is no "right" way to transition. You don't have to be a perfectly binary, gender conforming trans person in order to take hormones. We all have different levels of estrogen and testosterone, and that means women and nonbinary people don't have to have estrogen-dominant systems and men and nonbinary people don't have to have testosterone-dominant systems. Do what sparks joy and if it's shit, hit the bricks!

[sevens-evan]

diy hrt is obviously a net positive for the world and i think it's fine to promote information about it but it is crazy how a) a lot of the people who do promote it have an insane superiority complex about how much better and braver they are than people who go through a medical institution and b) how many of them actually know nothing about it. saw a diy person on here the other day talking abt how finasteride "is well known to literally only affect hair loss and not do anything else" and it's like. it's true that finasteride use in trans men is not studied and anecdotal reports vary wildly but if you know Literally Anything, Even A Single Thing about what finasteride actually does in the body and what dht does as a hormone you would know that's a stupid thing to say. which leaves one to conclude that that person Thought they knew what they were talking about without doing even a single second of googling. not good!

[t4transsexual]

in regards to my pervious post about the spirit bares its teeth, what a truly wonderful day to be st4t and to be a trans man and to have a trans girlfriend and love her like that. what a wonderful thing it is to watch someone grow into their own skin the way you did years ago and will continue to do. what a wonderful day it is to be so opposite that it loops back around to be the same again. what a wonderful day to love how we love and to have what we have. i am so blessed that i get to call this beautiful girl my girlfriend and get to have the relationship i have with her

[muttmedley]

also being on testosterone is great and i'm happy with all the changes but lately the fact that i'm starting to no longer "look like someone who is attracted to women in a gay way" is really weighing on me lmao

[metanarrates]

maybe being back on testosterone will fix my goddamn energy levels. maybe